09 December 2012

Guest Post: Hailey

Today's guest post is from my friend Hailey. She's not a blogger so just enjoy her post!

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Hello Everyone!
My lovely friend Jessica just gave birth to the most adorable little gentleman and was looking for some people to do posts for her. I personally don't have a blog, but I thought I'd try to lend a hand and post some pics and talk a bit about it! So a very big thank you to Jessica for trusting me to do my first ever blog post here on her awesome blog! I must say I am totally honoured, and I'll admit, a bit nervous! Be kind dear readers! <3


The art I chose to try my hand at (uhm...no pun intended) was inspired from Nailside. I've been in love with it since the first time I saw it and have kept putting off trying it myself. I figured this was the perfect reason to do it. And for anyone interested...yes I am holding a Hello Kitty Pez dispenser. 





If you know Nailside, you know her lines are perfect. And since she's the one coming up with this stuff she knows how to do them properly. Mine isn't quite so perfect, but for my first try I'm pretty happy with it! 
I figure I'll tell you what I did and why it wasn't the right way, or the easiest way to do it. Hopefully you'll be inspired to give it a try yourself and can learn from my mistakes.





First I did a base coat of Gelous. Personally I like it because I find it dries in a reasonable amount of time and it seems to do a decent job of protecting from staining. The second and third steps were thin coats of China Glaze Sexy in the City. It's not the exact colour used in the original, but I don't have it and my Sephora doesn't either. So make do with what you've got! Side note: I think this would be really pretty with purple and silver, or possibly lime green and hot pink. Don't limit yourself!





From here I cut a triangle out from a piece of tape with it angled wide enough to go to the edges of my nails. I didn't get each side even, but unless someone is getting all up in your bubble they won't be able to tell. Promise! I discarded the cut out portion and put the tape on my nail.





The next step is the gold...I used Claire's Gold Fleck. I got it about a hundred years ago, I believe around Christmas. Any gold will do. A one coater is preferable. One mistake I made was waiting for the gold to dry completely before stamping. But I learned pretty quick after the first couple nails. As soon as the gold was dry to the touch, but still wet underneath I stamped with Konad black using the Konad plate M57. Now to peel off the tape! Also, this is where I realized what an awful mistake I'd made. Peeling the tape should really be done when the polish is still wet or the polish will peel off with the tape. Which is what happened to me and why, as you can see, my edges aren't perfectly straight. Since I decided to go this way, I had to do one nail at a time to try and avoid as much peeling as possible. Tedious.




Once I peeled away the tape, and rearranged my peeling triangles I used a coat of Seche Vite to seal it in.
Now for my advice: Paint your nails gold, stamp, cover the triangle at the tips of your nails to protect them and paint the blue last. This way you can peel the tape off right away when the polish is still wet and get smooth, straight lines.
So lesson learned! 





Have any of you tried a tape mani? Did you learn the hard way too? Any thoughts on other fun colour combos to try?
Thank you so much Jessica for having me here! Congrats on the little bundle of joy!

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What an awesome post Hailey!!! I think you should try blogging!

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